One in 8,700: where the personalities of Middlebury proper are celebrated

Nick Lynch does not look like he plays king to an Internet domain, but the personal fitness trainer owns Superb Health LLC and runs his own wellness Web site, http://imsuperb.com. Lynch schedules in-person sessions with clients in Middlebury, but the Web site is a way to offer personalized fitness routines and meal plans based on his holistic wellness ideals to a larger population.

“A one-hour personal training rate can be anywhere from $30 up to $200 an hour, and I always charge lower because I want anybody to be able to afford it,” said Lynch. “It’s not like that everywhere you go — I’ve worked at gyms where it’s $100 a session, and it’s really tough telling people that they really need [a fitness plan] and they can’t afford it based on their income. The idea behind the Web site was to make it affordable for anybody. The most you pay is $15 a month.”

Lynch, who moved to Middlebury in August 2009, spent 18 months working on Imsuperb.com before it launched in May 2009. He shares the wellness expertise he has developed over the last eight years through the International Sports Science Association and yearly conferences with more than 130 current site members.

A membership to Imsuperb.com entails a quick survey to determine a new client’s fitness level and what goals he or she has, and then the client can access a personalized daily workout plan and schedule one-on-one chats with Lynch or his two brothers, a chiropractor and a nutritionist, respectively.

“The workouts are all videos, pictures, voice and text descriptions,” said Lynch. “It’s set up based on your current goals and level, so if you’ve never worked out a day in your life, you’ll start out at a lower level.”

Lynch, his brothers and his fiancée, who is a nurse and who also works with Superb Health, filmed the instructional videos using a professional film crew to maximize the quality, and they are currently developing a feature that will allow site members to download the videos to an iPod. Making the videos more accessible fits with Lynch’s broader accessibility goals — he wants wellness to be available to everyone, everywhere.

“There aren’t too many trainers out there willing to charge less,” said Lynch. “I am, but I’m only here in Middlebury. I can’t also train in California. We just had a client sign up from Switzerland; I can’t train in Switzerland, too. [The Web site] lets anybody, anywhere have access to [affordable preventative care].”

Other personal trainers, including a large gym in Milwaukee, Wisc., use Imsuperb.com as a supplement for their clients who can only afford a few in-person sessions a week. Lynch, who was born and raised in Montpelier, Vt., spent some time in Milwaukee “to see how they run businesses in a different part of the country,” particularly big gyms. Big fitness sent Lynch in search of his own brand of wellness, and he found it by combining exercise and proper nutrition — one of his main interests.

“I’ve always been an athlete, and I would say at 16 I really started to get into nutrition and realize its effects,” said Lynch. “If people are eating horrible food like peanut butter and fluff white bread sandwiches and slugging it down with a protein shake, you notice their energy levels for one and their performance in sports, and you compare that with a whole food, nutrient-dense diet where the performance levels are phenomenal. I started to notice that certain foods just worked better and were more [energetically] sustainable.”

Lynch is still working on the meal plan aspect of the Web site, but for now he and his fiancée are making their own contribution to the world of good nutrition.

“We’re going to be at the farmers’ markets selling healthy ice cream this summer,” said Lynch. “Of course some eyebrows get raised when they hear healthy ice cream, but what it is is we buy strictly grass-fed milk and cream. That’s it. And the eggs are from chickens who eat bugs, which is what they’re supposed to eat, so they’re loaded with all sorts of cholesterol-lowering and fat-burning properties.”

When Lynch is not chatting with clients online or meeting with them in person, he can be found shredding on his electric guitar, hiking the TAM or reading 19th century Russian novels. Of course he also makes time for his own exercise routines and the adventure workouts that he leads at his house.

“Even if you don’t think you have the time, make the time to take care of your health first,” said Lynch. “If you don’t, you’re not all of a sudden going to start doing it when you’re 40 and busier than you are now.”